I'm surprised that nobody's posted this already, but I had a look at the
teletext this morning - on the BBC album chart, TRS is #2 behind Bat out of
Hell II, but on the ITV album chart, it's #1! Looks like all that radio
advertising on Capital last week paid some dividends!

I can now confirm Homeground's news: The Red Shoes debuted at no. 28, the
second highest debut this week. (Highest was a pretty big surprise: Frank
Sinatra's Duets debuted at no. 2.)

On the Modern Rock Tracks chart, "Rubberband Girl" enters at no.
21, while "Eat The Music" has fallen off.

In his column "Chart Beat", Fred Bronson writes a whole paragraph
on the album:

"RUNNING UP THAT CHART: The second-highest debut on The Billboard 200
belongs to Kate Bush, who enters at No. 28 with her eigth album, 'The Red
Shoes.' It's her highest-charting album ever in America; in its first week, it
places two notches higher than the peak position of 'Hounds Of Love' in 1985.
Bush's first two releases, 'The Kick Inside' and 'Lionheart,' never even
charted in the U.S., although she was an instant success in her native England.
She was 18 years old when her first single, 'Wuthering Heights,' went to No. 1
there; 'The Kick Inside' was the first album by a British female solo artist to
reach No. 1 in the U.K. All of her albums have made the top six in Great
Britain, where 'The Red Shoes' debuts at No. 2. That puts Bush in a three-way
tie with Diana Ross and Madonna as the most successful female artist in the
history of the U.K. album chart, according to Alan Jones of Music Week."

Fred Bronson is the editor of the Billboard Book of Top 40 Singles/Albums.

A word about the album charts, particularly for those in Britain who aren't
familiar with the situation. Billboard changed the method it uses to determine
those charts in 1991. Before then, the charts were determining by surveying a
representative sample of record stores. Now, a company called SoundScan actually
tracks album sales as they are purchased, by electronic links to stores' cash
registers. When this system was first introduced, the chart changed
substantially. Many people complained at the beginning that SoundScan was not
hooked up to a large enough number of independent stores and stores in the San
Francisco Bay Area, for example, both of which sell more alternative music than
other stores. SoundScan promised that this problem would be fixed as more and
more stores went on-line, and indeed, judging from the debut position of the
album, they seem to have kept their word.

Here's the point: In the old system an album of moderate popularity, such as
a Kate album, would start in the middle of the chart, then slowly move up the
chart to peak some time later. Hounds of Love, The Sensual World, and (to a
lesser extent) The Whole Story all followed this pattern. But with the new
system of tracking album sales instantly, that doesn't happen as much any more.
So, many albums now debut at what turns out to be their peak positions. If the
old system was still in use, and the album debuted at no. 28, we could REALLY
be excited, because it would have meant that the album would almost certainly
have peaked in the top 20. But now, 28 may be the peak. We'll just have to wait
and see.

I haven't been as diligent in checking out the Billboard charts for the last
few weeks as I usually am, so there is now a backlog of five weeks of data to
post. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that "Rubberband Girl"
entered Billboard's Hot 100 Singles chart in the December 25 issue, and no one
here mentioned it!

Here is the complete chart news for the last several weeks. Although no
issue was published on January 1, some chart positions for that week are
available as "last week" in the January 8 issue.

"Rubberband Girl" single:

Dec. 18: No. 9 on the Bubbling Under chart; 10 on Modern Rock Tracks.

[Bubbling Under are the highest charting singles never to have actually
made it onto the the Hot 100 chart.]

Dec. 25: No. 88 on Hot 100; 8 on Modern Rock Tracks.

Jan. 1: No. 99 on Hot 100; 10 on Modern Rock Tracks.

Jan. 8: No. 97 on Hot 100; 10 on Modern Rock Tracks.

Jan. 15: No. 95 on Hot 100; 12 on Modern Rock Tracks.

"Rubberband Girl" video:

Dec. 25: No. 45 on MTV's chart.

Jan. 15: No. 48 on MTV's chart.

There was no video chart in the Jan. 8 issue.

"The Red Shoes" album:

Dec. 18: No. 145

Dec. 25: No. 159

Jan. 1: No. 167

Jan. 8: No. 161

Jan. 15: No. 196

Looks like it's going to drop off soon, unless R.G. really takes off.

Here's what Fred Bronson said in his Dec. 25 "Chart Beat" column:

"STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION: So you thought the Spinners had the last
word in songs about elasticity when 'Rubberband Man' spent three weeks at No. 2
in 1976? Wrong. Kate Bush makes a rare appearance on the Hot 100 as 'Rubberband
Girl' enters at No. 88. It's only her third solo single to chart in a 15-year
career. Her debut release, 'Wuthering Heights,' went to No. 1 in the U.K. but
failed to chart here. The follow-up, 'The Man With The Child In His Eyes,'
stopped at No. 85 here. Her biggest single was 'Running Up That Hill,' No. 30
in 1985. A duet with Peter Gabriel, 'Don't Give Up,' peaked at No. 72 in 1987."